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    Make It a Maintenance Recipe - What is that?

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    MAKE IT A MAINTENANCE RECIPE

    What's that all about?

    Week 1 and 2 recipes in general are lower calorie recipes, as the phase 3 meal plan is specifically designed to raise your calories gradually during the 3 week period of stabilization - remember the purpose of this is what's called "reverse dieting" where we're gradually raising calories to help your body adjust to a higher calorie intake without shocking your system and causing fat storage.

    But you're going to want to make week 1 and 2 recipes again and again.

    And the idea is really to raise your calories as high as you can without weight gain- once you get it there (and this can totally be improved quite a lot through the type of exercise you do- please check out the exercise section to learn more about that) you don't want to be dropping back to 1000 or 1100 calories in a day by making all the week 1 and 2 recipes as they are.

    SO.....
    In weeks 1 and 2 at the bottom of each recipe you will see a "make it a maintenance recipe" box - this section offers a few options for raising the calories of each of those dishes just enough to make a maintenance level recipe (vs. a stabilizing or lose weight level calorie recipe).

    So you will see suggestions for adding calorie by choosing one option listed.
    There are ways to add protein, to add fat, or to add carbs.

    Add Carbs Category

    Some of you might think that you won't be doing the add carbs category but you might be surprised that eventually your body can handle some carbs. Especially if you utilize the right type of exercise which we talked about the exercise section of the program. There is research that shows that when you eat a low carb diet for a very LONG period of time, your active thyroid hormone, T3, do go down. Our thyroid levels are basically our metabolism so having them lowered means our metabolism is lowered. It's just something interesting to be aware of. Also finding a way to add in carbs in P4 is pretty ideal, right? It tastes good, it can be good for our thyroid hormone and it's also easier to eat in general when that is an option.

    Dairy and Nut-Free

    Additionally,  Weeks 1 and 2 recipes are dairy (except butter) and nut free recipes. So as time goes on you might find you can have some nuts or some dairy. So you might find those little add-ins to boost the level of flavor or texture or what-have-you to make that complete meal that you can eat in your daily life in Phase 4.

    Leaning Out

    If you are trying to lean out, you can eat the recipes as they were originally written of course too!